Posted on Twitter:
This is information we need to keep in mind as the war in Gaza continues.
Tag Archives: Twitter
Posted by a friend on Twitter–a very interesting question:
The Difference Between The Israeli And Arab Cultures
Brigitte Gabriel posted this on Twitter. I think it paints a clear picture of the difference between the Israeli and Arab cultures.
My mother was injured towards the end of the war in Lebanon, and we were left with no choice but to bring her to Israel to be treated for her injuries. I remember my father handing me $60 from the mattress in our bomb shelter, the war had nearly bankrupted my family. We did not have much left and a trip across the border to Israel for medical treatment seemed out of reach. I took my mother to the local “hospital” in town which was now bombed out and left with just 1 large room for treating basic injuries. The volunteer Israeli doctor and nurses were treating everyone who entered but had limited resources. My mother needed to visit a real hospital. We put my mother in an Israeli donated ambulance and drove to the Israeli border, it was about a 10 minute drive to the border. Once we arrived at the border the Lebanese driver who knew my parents asked me, “Do you have any money for the ambulance ride to the border?” As an innocent child at the time with no experience around money, I pulled out all $60 and said, “This is all I have, how much do you need?” He took $30 and I thanked him for his kindness and service and proceeded to be with my mother as she was loaded into another ambulance to transport us to an Israeli hospital across the border, this time we were driven by an IDF reservist called up for the war. The drive to the Israeli hospital was long and when we finally arrived, I knew the $30 left was not going to be enough money. If it had cost $30 for a 10 minute drive to the border, there is no way it could be enough for this long journey. As they were loading my mother off the ambulance and into the hospital, I pulled out the remaining money I had and offered it to the Israeli ambulance driver for the trip. He looked down at my money and then back at me and said, “What is this for? We are offering this service to you and your mother for free. Keep the money for the rest of your trip and I wish your mother a speedy recovery.” He then went on his way to help others in need. I felt so touched. I could not believe his kindness. I then became enraged as I realized the Lebanese driver who was friends with my parents took advantage of me and stole $30 from me for a free service. It was that moment that I realized everything I was told about Israel from the Arabs in Lebanon was a lie. It was that moment that I learned the difference between the Arab culture and the Israeli culture.
Posted on Twitter by Victor Davis Hanson:
Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
As Gen. Milley leaves office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on his last day he goes out ranting about his loyalty to the Constitution and not to a “dictator,”—blasting Trump without mentioning Trump, and thus trumping as it were Trump’s own excesses with those of his own. So transits the most politicalized and weaponized 4-star CJS since the office was created. Would that instead Milley had at least explained the 2021 historically disastrous flight from Kabul and defeat in Afghanistan, or the radical implementation of woke agendas into the Pentagon retention and promotion policies, or why he felt the illustrious and renown Professor Kendi, of current Boston University “Center for Antiracist Research” infamy, should be required reading for the U.S. military at time when its recruitment is descending into historical lows and its deterrent reputation is seriously questioned. So what about Milley’s own “constitutional” legacy? Is it that an officer who deems his civilian President and Commander in Chief dangerous—as diagnosed by 4-star psychiatrist, state department diplomat, and now theater commander Milley—has a right to commandeer the chain of command, usurp powers that are expressly by law denied to him, and then take it on himself in a time of Chinese-American tensions to freelance, by contacting his communist counterpart to warn him about his own president’s diagnosed volatility, and to reassure the hardened Stalinist that Dr/Gen. Milley will inform him first of any precipitate action from the White House. Dictatorial much? Americans might ask the departing Milley, two questions, 1) if Trump is reelected in 2024, will a retired General Milley, as did his retired 4-star colleagues in 2020, violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and repeat his current charges against a second-term President Trump—matching the previous invective of his colleagues’ accusations of “liar” or “Mussolini”?. And 2) what would Milley have done had a subordinate like himself, say a 3-star general, decided that Gen. Mark Milley’s Beijing gambit and his arrogation of command powers that were not legally his own, posed a grave threat to the republic? And thus would such a 3-star call up theater commanders to warn them to resist Milley’s reckless orders and to report to him first, followed by his phone call to the top Chinese PLA general to assure them that if Milley somehow gave an order deemed by the 3-star to be dangerously provocative, then he would not only not obey it but rather first warn the Chinese military of Milley’s unstable state of mind. Is that the kind of military Milley wishes to leave as his legacy, as he departs barking accusations at the moon?
Exposing The Lies
On Monday, Trending Politics reported that the FBI agent who testified about the agency’s involvement with Hunter Biden’s laptop lied under oath to put distance between the Bureau and efforts to discredit the information gleaned from its discovery. Why is it that people who lie under oath to protect Democrats never seem to be held accountable?
The article reports:
Rep. Jordan’s announcement comes as part of the Facebook Files, an effort by House Republicans to disclose the multitude of ways in which federal authorities have pressured social media companies to silence critics and oppress the free flow of information. New documents obtained by the Judiciary Committee show that the FBI previously met with Big Tech companies in the wake of the laptop’s discovery and sought to suppress news about it on major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Elvis Chan, a Special Agent with the FBI, served as the “main conduit” between Big Tech and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in 2016, according to Jordan. Chan, in addition to Task Force Chief Laura Dehmlow, originally confirmed the authenticity of the laptop to Twitter before changing course and telling Facebook and other social media companies “no comment.” The answer led Facebook, and eventually Twitter, to suppress the sharing of news stories about Hunter’s laptop.
It has become very obvious in recent months that the American voters have been lied to and led to believe things that were simply not true. If we allow the people currently in control of the Department of Justice and the White House to continue in these roles after 2024, then we are responsible for the death of equal justice in America. Think carefully before you vote next year.
How Did We Get So Skewed?
This is a screen shot from the Daily Caller on Twitter:
No. This is a story of a corrupt family and one son’s drug addiction enabled by the rest of the family. This is a story of corruption at the highest levels of government. This is a story of a family that sold out their country for their pocketbooks. Unfortunately, this also may be a story where no one is ever held accountable. Even if President Biden is removed from office, will he or anyone in his family be held accountable for the illegal business dealings and money laundering that they have engaged in for so long?
The “Horrors” Of Free Speech
Just when you thought you had heard everything…. On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article that illustrates how far the mainstream media has wandered from the concept of informing the American people.
The article reports:
NBC’s Tom Costello worried Tuesday that Daily Caller co-founder and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will not be policed for his speech on his new show.
Carlson announced Tuesday that his show will air exclusively on Twitter going forward.
“As of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech,” Carlson said in his announcement video. “The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter, where we are now. Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops. Twitter is not a partisan site – everybody’s allowed here, and we think that’s a good thing.”
Carlson said his show will air “soon.”
Costello grew animated over the news during Tuesday night’s segment of “Hallie Jackson NOW.”
“Okay, well listen, Twitter was already under fire for misinformation, disinformation, all-out lies, anti-Semitism [and] racism before Elon Musk took over, and now it’s gotten kind of crazy — seemingly unmoored, if you will. Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point? It’s just a free for all?” he wondered.
Twitter is a bit of a free-for-all right now, but that is good. It provides readers with a lot of information that they can evaluate. The interesting part of the article was former CNN host Brian Stelter stating that Tucker Carlson was a drag on Fox News’ profits. Well, that’s an interesting comment. Despite having the second most-watched show on Cable TV in 2022, Tucker Carlson’s show was not very profitable. Why? Because of a massive email and calling campaign by the political left threatening to boycott Tucker Carlson’s advertisers. The campaign was successful, and Tucker Carlson lost his first-tier advertisers. So what Brian Stelter said was true, but he forgot to mention the reason behind it.
Disinformation And Misinformation
I apologize in advance for the length of this article, but there is a lot of information in the article linked.
On April 26th, PC Magazine posted an article titled, “Why Disinformation and Misinformation Are More Dangerous Than Malware.”
Here are some highlights from that article:
“The overwhelming majority of people who are ever going to see a piece of misinformation on the internet are likely to see it before anybody has a chance to do anything about it,” according to Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust and Safety at Twitter.
When he was at Twitter, Roth observed that over 90% of the impressions on posts were generated within the first three hours. That’s not much time for an intervention, which is why it’s important for the cybersecurity community to develop content moderation technology that “can give truth time to wake up in the morning,” he says.
“It’s a hacking of people problem,” lamented panel moderator Ted Schlein, chairman and general partner at Ballistic Ventures, a cybersecurity venture capital firm. “In my view, if we spend so much time, energy, and dollars fighting to protect our technology and our systems, shouldn’t we be doing the same for people?”
The cybersecurity community should focus on creating ways to detect and shut down disinformation while mitigating its effects, Schlein argued. Presumably, this call to action includes targeting misinformation, which differs from disinformation as it relates to intent. (Misinformation is defined(Opens in a new window) as “incorrect or misleading information,” regardless of intent. Disinformation is a lie told deliberately to influence opinion or cover up a fact.)
I totally disagree with his perspective. The responsibility is not with the platform–the responsibility is with the reader to take the time to evaluate the information and do their own research. Saying that a platform should detect and shut down disinformation leads to censorship. It also brings up the question of who decides what is misinformation or disinformation. Remember that during the 2020 election, articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop were censored and declared misinformation or disinformation. How did that work out?
The article also notes:
Here are some recent examples of disinformation campaigns and misinformation spreaders caught in the act:
-
- Medical professionals have been complaining for years about patients taking dangerous advice from “expert influencers” on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
- A Chinese disinformation operative exposed a plan to discourage Americans from voting by spreading lies online.
- Last year, climate change deniers found themselves de-platformed by Pinterest.
- Spotify darling Joe Rogan briefly found himself in hot water for airing conversations with COVID-19 deniers.
- Experts say the “playbook” for disseminating the kind of disinformation seen in the run-up to the 2016 general election in the United States is being exploited around the world.
- As PCMag’s Chandra Steele writes, antisemitic conspiracy theorists are making their voices heard on Twitter, and the platform is failing to protect its users.
Why is the platform required to protect their users? The users can make decisions as to what they choose to believe and which platforms they choose to frequent.
Mr. Roth also stated that truth can change. If truth changes, was it truth to begin with?
The article reports:
Roth began his part of the panel discussion by noting that it’s natural for knowledge and perceived truths to change over time, and “something that is known to be true with absolute certainty one day could be known to be totally false another.”
Roth cautioned that misinformation is not actually like malware because malware is software that has been designed to generate a specific outcome every time it runs. Disinformation doesn’t guarantee the intended results. Effectively tackling misinformation and disinformation online will require dynamism and flexibility from cybersecurity developers, Roth said.
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There is a section at the end that reminds us of the First Amendment. Not all media platforms are happy that The First Amendment exists. We need to keep that in mind.
A Police State?
Matt Taibbi is a journalist who has been reporting on the Twitter files released by Elon Musk. Matt Taibbi is not a conservative and is considered an objective journalist. As anyone who has followed the story is aware, the Twitter files show a lot of illegal activity in the collaboration between Twitter and a number of government agencies. Obviously, the deep state is not happy about this information being revealed to the public. Telling the truth has consequences.
On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported:
An IRS agent showed up at the home of ‘Twitter Files’ journalist Matt Taibbi on the same day he testified before Jim Jordan’s Committee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.
How convenient.
On March 9, Matt Taibbi dropped a Twitter Files ahead of his testimony to Congress: THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger appeared before Congress later that day.
The FTC had already been harassing Elon Musk and demanding he “identify all journalists” granted access to the Twitter files.
The article notes:
The IRS agent just showed up to the journalist’s home unannounced!
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. We’ve seen the letter, and both the circumstances and timing of the IRS focus on this journalist raise serious questions.
The article concludes:
Mr. Taibbi has provided the committee with documentation showing his 2018 return had been electronically accepted, and he says the IRS never notified him or his accountants of a problem after he filed that 2018 return more than four-and-a-half years ago.
He says the IRS initially rejected his 2021 return, which he later refiled, and it was rejected again—even though Mr. Taibbi says his accountants refiled it with an IRS-provided pin number. Mr. Taibbi notes that in neither case was the issue “monetary,” and that the IRS owes him a “considerable” sum.
There is a desperate need to clean house in Washington.
A Strategy For More Government Control
On March 2nd, The White House posted the following on their website:
Note the phrase, “…shifting the burden for cybersecurity away from individuals…” Also note the phrase, “Biden-Harris administration.”
On March 4th, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about this strategy and noted the following:
The “National Cybersecurity Strategy” aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to “cybersecurity” and communication vectors. This policy is both a surveillance system and an information filtration prism where the government will decide what is information, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, then act upon it.
In part, this appears to be a response to the revelations around government influence of social media, the Twitter Files. Now we see the formalization of the intent. The government will be the arbiter of truth and cyber security, not the communication platforms or private companies. This announcement puts the government in control.
All of the control systems previously assembled under the guise of the Dept of Homeland Security now become part of the online, digital national security apparatus. I simply cannot emphasis enough how dangerous this is, and the unspoken motive behind it; however, to the latter, you are part of a small select group who are capable of understanding what is in this announcement without me spelling it out.
Remember, we have already lost the judicial branch to the interests of the national security state. All judicial determinations are now in deference to what is called broadly “national security,” and the only arbiter of what qualifies to be labeled as a national security interest is the same institutional system who hides the corruption and surveillance behind the label they apply.
We cannot fight our way through the complexity of what is being assembled, until the American People approach the big questions from the same baseline of understanding. What is the root cause that created the system? From there, this announcement takes on a more clarifying context – where we realize this is the formalization of the previously hidden process.
Please follow the link to read the entire article at The Conservative Treehouse. It is long, but worth the read.
The Twitter Saga Continues
In understanding any of what was going on at Twitter, it is a good idea to refer to a series of articles posted at The Conservative Treehouse describing Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. The basic premise of the articles about Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is that the business model for Twitter does not work unless various agencies prop it up. Twitter is the the U.S. government as Tik Tok is to the Chinese Communist government.
On Sunday, Breitbart posted an article about some of the things we have recently learned about the collaboration between Twitter and various government agencies.
The article reports:
The CIA was among a number of security state agencies, including the State Department and the Pentagon, involved in censorship at Twitter, according to the ninth tranche of Twitter Files released by Elon Musk, via journalist Matt Taibbi.
Following the bizarre statement released by the FBI, calling the Twitter Files reporting “misinformation” spread by “conspiracy theorists” with the “sole purpose of discrediting the agency,” Taibbi posted a new tranche revealing much more widespread government involvement in censorship than previously known — adding, “Why stop with one [agency]?”
The ninth release of Twitter Files displays aggressive efforts by the CIA and other agencies in the security state to force Twitter’s hand in censoring various political opinions and speech, through constant contact with the company’s executives, one of whom Taibbi reveals is ex-CIA himself.
Taibbi writes that the FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter, describing the bureau as a “doorman” for the other agencies to connect with Twitter.
“The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship,” Taibbi writes, “encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
The article concludes:
Taibbi explains how the government would push Twitter according to its theories about “foreign influence” that Twitter did not see borne out in its own data. Twitter would respond to the government’s “constant pressure” that there was no evidence for their assertions, however, Twitter still surrendered its independence.
“The #TwitterFiles show execs under constant pressure to validate theories of foreign influence – and unable to find evidence for key assertions,” Taibbi writes, providing a number of examples.
“‘Due to a lack of technical evidence on our end, I’ve generally left it be, waiting for more evidence,’ he says. ‘Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution’,” Taibbi reports, adding, “Translation: ‘more aggressive’ ‘government partners’ had closed Twitter’s ‘window’ of independence.”
The CIA did not respond for request for comment, Taibbi reports:
“The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.”
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We are running out of conspiracy theories–they are all turning out to be true.
An Interesting Question
On Tuesday, The American Thinker posted an article asking an interesting question, “Why Did the FBI Want Joe Biden to Become President?”
Think about that question for a moment. They knew his history. They knew his foreign policy mistakes, his history of plagiarism, his history of lying, they had the laptop, so they knew about the influence peddling of Hunter and the questionable family business dealings. Why would they want someone like that to become President?
The article notes:
Just imagine for a moment that Donald Trump, Jr. (or Eric) sat on the board of directors for a foreign company and “earned” millions of dollars for literally doing nothing. He didn’t know the industry and didn’t speak the language. The only thing Junior brought to the table was his last name. He made deals with foreign agents and foreign corporations to acquire rare materials like cobalt (used in electric cars) that was sold to Chinese interests for profit. While on an extended drug binge, he took a computer with lots of incriminating evidence to a repair shop and forgot or didn’t care what he’d done with it. Then he ignored all the calls from the shop telling him to come pick up his computer. That would be huge news, wouldn’t it?
Of course, Donald Trump, Sr. would be crucified. The media coverage would be nonstop. After years of witch hunts, they would finally have legitimate criminal behavior to investigate. The thousands of hours of airtime devoted to fake scandals would finally have paid off.
But change the name from Donald Trump, Jr. to Hunter Biden and the political party that stands to suffer from the revelations from Republican to Democrat, and the media becomes curiously uninterested in doing their job, which is to report the truth: That Hunter Biden is the bagman for the Biden family crime syndicate. The latest Twitter Files information drop proves it. Not only has Hunter’s corrupt and criminal business deals been exposed, the extraordinary lengths to which the FBI acted to suppress a true story have been exposed, too.
The FBI played a substantial role in the 2020 election:
Who or what authorized them, a federal agency, to spend my tax dollars on manipulating social media to deliberately advance a false narrative about Hunter’s laptop? It’s difficult to find the right words to describe the depths of their corruption that has now been exposed for the whole world to see, but I’m certainly going to try my best. “Unbelievable” isn’t a very good descriptor either, because we have tons of evidence that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the FBI took extraordinary measures to manipulate the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.
The article concludes:
Another question popped into my head: why was the FBI working so feverishly to get the Biden administration into the White House, when they had to know how horribly corrupt the whole family was? Remember they took possession of the evidence on Dec. 9, 2019.
The most obvious answer that comes to my mind is that the administration, particularly the intelligence community, knew he was the candidate they could control. Conservatives left and right are being arrested and prosecuted for ridiculous reasons, crimes against conservatives aren’t being investigated, and the truth is being filtered and distorted to the point that it is unrecognizable. We’ve long suspected FBI corruption, and now we have irrefutable proof that it has been happening and continues to happen. It was to preserve their power at all costs. Perhaps the only truth Chuck Schumer ever told was when he famously warned Trump that the intelligence community had “six ways from Sunday” to come after him, and would do so, to protect its fiefdom.
This leads one to an obvious conclusion: the FBI has become the American Stasi. As of today, I have become very distrustful and afraid of my own government. I halfway expect my house to be raided and my own arrest coming for the crime of speaking truth to power.
Only one word accurately describes the crime the FBI has committed, and that word is treason.
May the punishment fit the crime.
President Trump represents a threat to the status quo. A lot of the status quo has been revealed through the released Twitter files, but I suspect that is simply the tip of the iceberg. The FBI is simply protecting their own corruption. How long are Americans going to allow that?
Taxpayer Dollars At Work
On Monday, Trending Politics reported that the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million dollars of taxpayer money for their “staff time.” That alone ought to be enough to fire everyone at the senior levels of the FBI and the DOJ.
The article includes the following screenshot:
When I have written about Twitter, I have continually referred to The Conservative Treehouse’s April 2022 article about Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. The basic premise of the article is that unless Twitter is to the Department of Justice and FBI what Tik Tok is to the Communist government of China, it’s business model does not make sense. This drop of Twitter files illustrates that point. It is frightening to me that taxpayer money is being used for obviously partisan political purposes.
The article at Trending Politics also includes the following:
Michael Shellenberger
14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel? No, they weren’t “Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov.
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
15. Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity. E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts.”
It’s time to dissolve the FBI and the DOJ and start from scratch.
Knowing Who The Players Are
On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about Elon Musk’s firing of Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker.
The article reports:
Chief Twit Elon Musk has fired Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker, citing his alleged involvement in suppressing the release of internal documents regarding Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
‘In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,’ Musk wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.
Musk added that Baker’s explanation of the events surrounding the laptop saga was ‘unconvincing.’
Journalist Matt Taibbi, who released the first batch of internal files about the Hunter saga on Friday, claimed that Baker had been fired in part for ‘vetting the first batch of ‘Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.’
The article notes some of the previous work of James Baker:
Before joining Twitter, Baker was former FBI general counsel under Director James Comey, and played a key role in the saga surrounding the Bureau’s controversial probe into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign.
The article also notes:
James Baker has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, who on October 27 became his boss.
Baker played a key role in a series of events that led to Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann going on trial in May, accused of lying to the FBI.
He was not accused of giving the FBI false information, but rather lying about who he worked for.
The saga began when Sussmann was given information from a group of data scientists who analyzed odd internet data they thought might suggest clandestine communications between a server for the Trump Organization and a server for Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution.
Sussmann then texted Baker, at the time the bureau’s general counsel, to say he had information the FBI should be aware of.
‘I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the bureau,’ Sussmann wrote in his text to Baker.
Baker testified that he was certain Sussmann was acting as an individual, and would likely not have met him were he working for the Clinton campaign.
Sussmann, a cybersecurity specialist, had worked for the Democratic Party in the context of Russia’s hacking of its servers, and Russia publishing emails from the servers.
Sussmann was also connected to the Democrats via one of his partners at the law firm Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, who was representing the Clinton campaign and hired Fusion GPS.
Yet multiple people – including Elias – testified that Sussmann was indeed acting on his own accord, and argued that actually going to the FBI was not in the interests of the Clinton campaign, which would have preferred a New York Times story drawing attention to the assertions.
The FBI later decided the allegations of links between the Trump campaign and the Russian bank were unfounded.
Musk tweeted during the trial that he thought Sussmann had ‘created an elaborate hoax’ about Russia, in a bid to help Clinton.
I wonder if Elon Musk understood how much housecleaning needed to be done when he bought Twitter.
The Threat Of Disinformation
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about Elon Musk’s release of Twitter’s documents showing censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The article reports:
Elon Musk’s release of internal emails relating to Twitter’s 2020 censorship is news by any definition, even if the mainstream media dismiss it. There will be many threads to unspool as more is released, but a couple of points are already worth making.
The first is that Mr. Musk would do the country a favor by releasing the documents all at once for everyone to inspect. So far he’s dribbled them out piecemeal through journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter feed, which makes it easier for the media to claim they can’t report on documents because they can’t independently confirm them.
A second point is an huzzah for Rep. Ro Khanna, the California progressive Democrat, who warned Twitter in 2020 about the free-speech implications and political backlash of censoring the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. That was good advice, even if Twitter didn’t take it.
A third point is the confirmation of the central role that former spies played in October 2020 in framing the Hunter Biden story in a way that made it easier for Twitter and Facebook to justify their censorship.
Recall that former Democratic intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan led the spooks in issuing a public statement suggesting that the laptop may have been hacked and its content was Russian disinformation. On Oct. 16, 2020, Mr. Clapper told CNN that “to me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.” On Oct. 19, 51 former spooks released their statement claiming that the arrival of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” (The statement and signers are published nearby.)
The article at the Wall Street Journal concludes:
The partisan foray by current and former U.S. intelligence officials in the last two elections should be deeply troubling to Americans on the left and right. They have authority by dint of access to information that isn’t confirmable by the press, which takes their spin as gospel. This is a form of political corruption that needs to be exposed, and perhaps the Twitter documents will help to unlock the story.
Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is very possible that the former and current U.S. intelligence officials working to get Joe Biden elected didn’t want President Trump looking into the domestic activities of our spy agencies. It seems that a thorough examination of those domestic activities is long overdue.
Project 21 Black Leadership Network Speaks Out
The Project 21 Black Leadership Network posted the following Press Release today:
Hopefully this is only the beginning of making Twitter the free speech hub that it is capable of being.
What Difference Did It Make?
We are getting a lot of information right now about the censorship operation that Twitter was operating in order to protect the Biden campaign during the 2020 election. The information is not really surprising to those of us who were paying attention, but some of this is actually news to many Americans. On Saturday, PJ Media posted an article about the probable consequences of Twitter’s censorship.
The article notes:
Let’s begin with the premise that suppressing the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop affected the outcome of the 2020 Election. The Media Research Center (MRC) conducted one of the only polls about how the information on the computer would have affected the way people voted. MRC’s analysis found that full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate. This would have flipped all six of the swing states Biden won to Trump, giving the former President 311 electoral votes.
By that analysis, if not for the fateful decision to censor the laptop story, which Gadde and Baker had a hand in, at least five major things would be different.
The article then goes on to list five of the things that would be different:
First and foremost, it is almost certain there would not be a war in Ukraine right now. President Trump placed sanctions on the Nord 2 pipeline during his term, despite German objections. All Biden had to do was stand up to outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel. After all, the entire purpose of NATO is to protect the European continent from Russian aggression. Letting Germany and other western powers become dependent on Russian energy goes directly against the mission.
When the Biden administration inexplicably lifted the sanctions in May 2021, it green-lit the pipeline that would bypass Ukraine, depriving the former Soviet nation of transit revenues and making it more vulnerable to Russian aggression. Even Ukrainian President Voldymor Zelensky knew it.
…Next, the Ukrainian war led to Russia and China becoming closer allies and leading the BRIC nations. This group includes Brazil and India. Many believe these nations will be dominant suppliers of manufactured goods, services, and raw materials by 2050. There have been reports that BRIC nations and their allies want to replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Biden administration seems content to let this happen without a challenge. As the kleptocrats in our government, led by Joe Biden and Wall Street, lead us into managed decline, you can thank Gadde and Baker.
Third, our European allies would not be facing an energy crisis. The war in Ukraine needlessly destroyed Nord 1, which supplied much of the continent. Additionally, the Biden administration’s not-in-my-backyard energy policy leaves the U.S. unable to meet our own energy needs, let alone help Europe.
…The same NIMBY energy policy also makes the United States less safe. In a 2020 debate, Trump explained in about 10 seconds how U.S. energy independence strengthened our foreign policy. Now, Joe Biden begs some of the worst dictators in the world for oil, and they laugh at him. Biden also drains our strategic petroleum reserves to save Democrats from getting obliterated in the midterms, leaving us less prepared.
The article concludes:
Finally, as you struggle with inflation on food and gas, know that it never needed to happen. When Trump left office, the economy was recovering from the pandemic on a V-shaped trajectory. The American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act blew more money into an economy overheated by pandemic relief. When the new administration allowed even more dollars to chase fewer goods, prices rose. So, when you are rolling your eyes over your grocery bill, thank Gadde and Baker. Their manipulation of Twitter helped Joe Biden do that.
The only constitutional solution to a stolen election is the next election. Please keep that in mind. For those of you that hate President Trump, remember the good he did for the average American. You may not like his style, but he accomplished more in four years than the past five presidents. In the interest of fairness and for the good of the country, he needs to be re-elected in 2024.
Misplaced Blame?
On Saturday, The Daily Wire posted the following headline:
Ex-Twitter Executive: Elon Musk Is Putting Us ‘In Harm’s Way’ By Showing How We Censored Content
So wait a minute; I’m just curious. When the FBI puts up a wanted poster, are they putting the person on that poster in harm’s way? So doing something illegal is not the problem, pointing it out is?
The article notes:
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety claimed Friday night that Twitter CEO Elon Musk was putting people’s lives in danger by revealing internal company documents showing how employees censored conservatives and a negative news story about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former Sr. Director, Head of Trust & Safety, complained about Musk’s decision to release internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi about the company’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.
…“Publicly posting the names and identities of front-line employees involved in content moderation puts them in harm’s way and is a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do,” Roth posted on Mastodon.
Publicly posting the names and identities of those who broke the law might actually prevent others from breaking the law, but I guess Mr. Roth doesn’t see it that way.
James Woods was one of the people impacted by the censorship. He appeared on Tucker Carlson last week.
The article reports his comments:
Woods joined Fox News host Tucker Carlson as Taibbi was releasing the internal information from Twitter.
“I’ve been a target of these people for six years. They have destroyed my career,” Woods said. “They have destroyed my livelihood. They’ve destroyed my faith in this country that my family has defended in the military since the Revolutionary War.”
“I can guarantee you one thing, more than anything else you’ll ever hear in your life, I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee. No matter what, whether I win or lose, I am going to stand up for the rights of every American,” he said. “I’m not a celebrity, I’m hardly recognizable anymore because my career has been destroyed by these very people.”
This is not acceptable behavior in a supposedly-free nation.
The Dangers Of Biased Social Media
I am writing this article as someone who has been routinely ‘shadow banned’ on Facebook, fact checked incorrectly, and restricted. Some of our social media has decided that they are the sole arbiters of what is truth and they are not open to opposing viewpoints. This is dangerous to a society that supposedly embraces free speech.
Yesterday, Townhall reported that Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter did interfere in the 2020 election.
The article reports:
Newly minted Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk revealed Wednesday that under previously leadership, the social media giant did in fact interfere in elections. Musk promised “Twitter 2.0” will change course and operate transparently on the issue.
…Most infamously, Twitter banned any mention of Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. By default, they also censored Joe Biden’s deep involvement and shady business dealings with foreign adversaries.
At the time platform executives, including then CEO Jack Dorsey, justified the multi-month banning of the account belonging to the New York Post — the nation’s oldest paper — whose reporters broke the laptop story in October 2020. They also banned White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she shared the story, along with countless others who did the same.
During testimony on Capitol Hill in 2021, Dorsey admitted the social media platform had no factual basis for censoring the story.
The article notes that a recent poll showed a significant number of voters would not have cast their ballots for Biden if they had known about the contents of the laptop.
The article includes the following quote:
Nearly four of five Americans who’ve been following the Hunter Biden laptop scandal believe that “truthful” coverage would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, according to a new poll.
A similar percentage also said they’re convinced that information on the computer is real, with just 11% saying they thought it was “created by Russia,” according to the survey conducted by the New Jersey-based Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics.
And an even higher number — 81% — said US Attorney General Merrick Garland should appoint a special counsel to investigate matters related to the first son’s infamous laptop, the existence of which was exclusively revealed by The Post in October 2020.
Actually, Twitter is not entirely to blame. What about Americans who didn’t bother to do their own research but instead depended strictly on the mainstream media? We cannot maintain our republic without informed voters. We need more voters willing to be informed.
A Victory For Freedom Of Speech
Having been routinely shadow banned on Facebook (there is a Right Wing Granny group on Facebook, please join), I appreciate the fact that Texas is fighting the censorship that Big Tech has imposed on conservatives in recent years. It seems that there may be an end to that censorship. As I write this, a friend’s post has been thoroughly blacked out because Facebook didn’t think anyone should be allowed to see it.
On Tuesday, Fox News reported the following:
A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law on Friday that seeks to curb censorship by social media platforms. The ruling, a major victory for Republicans who charge companies like Twitter and Facebook are limiting free speech, is a step in a major legal battle that could end up at the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit is challenging HB 20, a Texas bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that regulates social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users, which includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, and says they cannot censor or limit users’ speech based on viewpoint expression.
In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Oldham continued.
The article notes:
Friday’s ruling created what is known as a “circuit split,” since the eleventh circuit struck down a similar social media law in Florida. A circuit split generally increases the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up a case.
It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court will take the case and what their ruling will be. It is also interesting to see if this case settled before the mid-term election.
Investigating Social Media Censorship
On July 14th, The Conservative Review posted an article about the ongoing battle between Twitter and free speech. For a real analysis of exactly who and what Twitter is, please read this article from The Conservative Treehouse.
The article at The Conservative Review reports:
Can Congress pass a law requiring that all platforms of speech censor any negative comment about Pfizer? “Well, of course not,” you will say, “it violates the First Amendment.” In that case, why should it be different when the executive branch works intimately with government-created and liability-protected monopolies to zap anyone’s Twitter account who is critical of Pfizer and its magical products? That is not free market or private enterprise; it is the worst form of fascism, and now a new federal court ruling might bring this point to life.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana granted the request from the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general for discovery to collect documents linking the Biden administration to social media censorship. Thanks to this important order, we might be able to discover the scope of collaboration between government and Twitter and Facebook to censor stories (and people) pertaining to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, and election integrity.
On May 5, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry filed a First Amendment complaint against the Biden administration in the Western District of Louisiana alleging that the administration violated the Free Speech Clause by working with the tech giants to label all dissenting viewpoints on the aforementioned issues as “misinformation.” They alleged that this effort is being led by a “Disinformation Governance Board” (“DGB”) within the Department of Homeland Security.
The article concludes:
While the legal dispute plays out in court, it’s time for conservatives in the legislatures to hit back at the RINO governors for continuing to act as if anything COVID-related – be it a vaccine or mask mandate – is somehow coming from the private sector. The government mandated it for some, censored opposing viewpoints, absolved pharma of liability, paid for the product, distributed it, and marketed it. The notion that private actors endorsing these policies is an exercise in free-market capitalism is absurd. It is the responsibility of the state to interpose against such tyranny by banning companies from joining in with the federal policies.
We saw this done very effectively when the Florida Department of Health recommended against the baby shots and refused to distribute them. Publix actually decided on its own to follow the guidance of Florida rather than the federal government. It demonstrates that so much of this enforcement in the private sector is being done with the federal boot on companies’ necks. Those Republicans who hide behind affinity for the “private” sector and free markets to allow federal tyranny, censorship, and persecution to continue are complicit in the worst form of fascism.
The fact that private monopolies get roped into government fascism doesn’t ameliorate the pig; it makes it even more dangerous.
As I write this, I am restricted on Facebook because of posting articles about the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine and the health problems people have experienced as a result of the vaccine. I believe this information should be easily accessible to the public, but evidently Facebook does not. I am not telling people to avoid social media, but I strongly suggest that you find sources other than Facebook and Twitter for your news if you want to get all of the news.
Supporting Harassment Of People You Disagree With
There are a lot of Americans lamenting the lack of civility in our current political debate. However, many of those same Americans are not willing to look at some of the roots of that incivility.
On Saturday, The New York Post reported the following:
A left-wing activist group is offering $50 to anyone who gives them the location of the six Supreme Court justices who voted last month to overturn Roe v. Wade.
ShutDownDC said it would pay the bounty to anyone who shares a “confirmed sighting” of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett or John Roberts.
The group will pay a whopping $200 if the justice was still in the location where they were sighted after 30 minutes, according to a Friday tweet.
This is not acceptable behavior, but I haven’t heard a lot of voices calling them out. The article includes a Tweet advertising that they will pay for a sighting of one of the conservative justices. Where are the voices calling for civility in American politics?
The article notes:
Twitter prohibits users from encouraging or calling on others to harass an individual or group of people, according to its rules and policies document. The platform hasn’t yet commented on why the bounties don’t violate its rules, Fox News reported.
ShutDownDC’s public bounty offer came after protesters affiliated with the group targeted Kavanaugh while he dined at a Morton’s steakhouse in Washington DC Wednesday evening. Kavanaugh was ultimately forced to flee the eatery through a back door.
This is a new low in American politics and needs to be discouraged strongly. This is harassment of people with opposing views. What we need is honest debate–not harassment.
Popularity On Twitter
Popularity on social media is a bit questionable at best. It’s like sitting at an imaginary ‘cool kids’ table in high school–and I do mean imaginary. However, there are those who use the number of followers on Twitter as a gauge of something. What, I don’t know, but something. At any rate, the question is, “How many people on Twitter are actually real people?”
Breitbart posted an article on Wednesday reporting that nearly half of President Joe Biden’s 22.3 million Twitter followers are fake accounts. One wonders who set up these fake accounts and why they were set up.
The article reports:
Software company SparkToro found that 49.3 percent of accounts following the official @POTUS Twitter account are “fake followers” or inauthentic accounts known as bots, according to a report by Newsweek.
The same analysis reportedly also found that more than 14 million accounts that follow Biden’s personal @JoeBiden Twitter account are either fake or insufficiently active. Therefore, a crackdown on fake Twitter accounts could see users like Biden lose a huge number of followers.
SparkToro reportedly defines fake followers as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”
The news of Biden’s fake Twitter followers comes after Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is currently trying to buy Twitter, expressed concerns about the number of bots on the social media platform.
Musk has since announced that his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter cannot move forward until the number of bot accounts on the platform is independently confirmed.
The SpaceX CEO tweeted that his offer was based on “Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” and he believes bots could account for 20 percent of the platform “or *much* higher.”
All of this has come to light because of Elon Musk’s plan to purchase Twitter. The article at Breitbart notes that uncovering these numbers may actually be part of Elon Musk’s negotiation process to acquire Twitter. Knowing that Elon Musk is a successful businessman who knows how to negotiate, that is entirely possible.
How Short Is The Average American’s Memory?
Disinformation is something the Biden administration wants to fight against. However, they seem to be spreading it themselves. On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some recent disinformation put out by the current White House.
The article reports:
The White House tweeted COVID-19 disinformation Thursday evening to imply that President Joe Biden deserves credit for vaccinating Americans against the virus.
The official White House twitter account tweeted that when Biden took office, on Jan. 20, 2021, there were millions of Americans unemployed and no COVID-19 vaccines available. The tweet went on to tout the decrease in unemployment since then, calling it the fastest drop in unemployment at the start of a president’s term ever.
…Biden himself had already received two doses of the coronavirus vaccine before he became president. He received his first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine Dec. 21, 2020, and then his second dose on Jan. 13, 2021.
Maybe he forgot.
On Saturday, Townhall reported that the misinformation had been corrected.
Townhall reported:
On Thursday night, as Katie highlighted, the official White House Twitter account, tweeted out a falsehood about the timeline of the availability of the vaccines. Though it has since been corrected, the original tweet in question is still up.
…Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for The Washington Post, also weighed in, demanding to know who was manning the account and calling for them to “Delete this false tweet.”
The job growth claims in the tweet are also questionable. Adding back jobs that you killed with the shutdown of the economy does not count as economic growth–it counts as recovery. This is really not the time for the Biden administration to be praising itself for its economic achievements–inflation has wiped out the salary gains Americans achieved during the Trump administration and food shortages and other supply chain issues have become a problem. I think the Biden administration needs to spend less time bragging and more time actually finding solutions to the problems they have created.
The Fight For Free Speech Continues
On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the U.S. government has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s business dealings.
The article reports:
“The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Mr. Musk’s tardy submission of a public form that investors must file when they buy more than 5% of a company’s shares,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The disclosure functions as an early sign to shareholders and companies that a significant investor could seek to control or influence a company.”
The report said that Musk’s April 4 disclosure filing was at least 10 days late, a move that is believed to have saved him more than $140 million because share prices could have been higher if the public knew about his ownership of 5% of the company.
“The case is easy. It’s straightforward,” Daniel Taylor, a University of Pennsylvania accounting professor, said. “But whether they’re going to pick that battle with Elon is another question.”
The report noted that a lawsuit against Musk from the SEC would likely not stop him from taking over Twitter since the company’s board of director’s unanimously approved to be acquired by Musk and the SEC may lack the power to do so. Musk’s purchase of Twitter is also reportedly being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Elon Musk has also stated that he would reinstate the account of President Trump.
The article notes his comments on the banning of President Trump:
“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the county, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk said, adding that the decision was “morally bad.”
“That doesn’t mean that someone gets to say whatever they want to say,” Musk said. “If they say something that is illegal or destructive to the world, then there should be perhaps a timeout, temporary suspension or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very little traction.”
“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk added.
Musk indicated that action could be taken against an account if there were tweets that violated platform policy, which he said “should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension—a temporary suspension—is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.”
Musk said that permanent bans “should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts.”
President Trump has stated that he would not return to Twitter but focus on his own social media site, Truth Social.
Stay tuned.